RFC 1149: the day a Norwegian Linux group pinged a host by pigeon
An April Fools' internet standard from 1990 says you can send IP packets by bird. In 2001 some people in Bergen actually did it.
One afternoon (Saturday 28th of April, 2001) nine pings went out across Bergen. Four came back. The first reply logged a round trip of 6,165,731 milliseconds. About 103 minutes which showed that pigeons are a hopeless way to move data.
RFC 1149 is called "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" and is written by D. Waitzman. It's dated 1 April 1990. RFC stands for Request for Comments and it's the document format of the internet standards process. This is a real filing in that series. It is also a joke about pigeons. An MTU is the biggest packet a link will carry and it's usually counted in bytes. This RFC instead counts it by weight: "A typical MTU is 256 milligrams." On reliability: "There is persistent delivery retry, until the carrier drops." On a real network the carrier is the signal on the line. This one has wings.
The frame format, meaning the rules for laying a packet out on the link is written very precisely. Print the datagram on a small scroll of paper in hex. Wrap it around one leg of the bird. At the far end (if the bird arrives) scan the hex number. Message received.
The Bergen Linux User Group followed the instructions. Their report opens "Finally, rfc 1149 is implemented!" The weather was nice, unusual for one of the rainiest places in Norway. Packets were sent. Packets arrived. Came off the leg. And got unrolled and sent through software that read characters out of the scanned image.
Unluckily, a neighbouring pigeoneer had a flock of pigeons up at the same time. "Our pigeons didn't want to go home at once, they wanted to fly with the other pigeons instead." The report adds: "And who can blame them, when the sun was finally shining after a couple of days?" After about an hour, a couple of birds broke off and headed home. One landed on the roof of the pigeon keeper's three-storey house and started tidying a wing feather.
Six birds made the return trip. Two of those six arrived with bare legs. Nine packets sent, four replies, 55% loss. The protocol was fine. Replies ran from about 54 minutes to about 106 minutes. "I guess this is a new record for ping times…" the report says, before closing: "The implementation was declared a success."
One scroll still exists. Christie's, the auction house, has catalogued it. It is a printed ping packet, 41 by 210 mm. The rolling creases are still visible from when it was attached to a pigeon's leg. It is framed, and inscribed as the property of David Waitzman, who wrote the standard as a joke in 1990 and apparently kept the receipt.
The design from this story
We make clothes out of internet history, so a ping delivered by pigeon was never going to get away. The T-shirt is called "One hop", scroll still tied to the leg.
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Where this comes from
- primaryRFC 1149, D. Waitzman, 1 April 1990Title, author and date; the typical MTU of 256 milligrams; persistent delivery retry; the frame format (printed scroll of hex, wrapped round one leg, scanned on receipt).
- primaryBLUG, The informal report from the RFC 1149 event, 2001-04-28The test on 28 April 2001; OCR with gocr; the neighbour's flock and about an hour of delay; the open cage; six return pigeons and four replies; the record ping times; declared a success.
- primaryBLUG, Log of the ping session, 2001The session log: first reply time=6165731.1 ms; 9 packets transmitted, 4 received, 55% packet loss; min/avg/max round trip. The live page /rfc1149/pinglogg/ is gone, so this is the Wayback copy.
- secondaryPeter Hansteen, The implementation of the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol, RFC1149, 25 years later, 2026A participant's notes for a 2005 talk, published 2026: why ping, the 25-packet argument, lofts about three kilometres apart across Lovstakken, the pigeon on the roof, NO CARRIER.
- secondaryChristie's, Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol, April 2001One surviving printed ping packet on a small scroll, 41 x 210 mm, rolling creases visible, framed, inscribed Property of David Waitzman.